What’s Broken is Brilliant
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Do you remember the first time you really understood that the world you lived in was not safe? Sadly, for some, this education comes at far too early an age. Perhaps you were powerfully wounded as a young child by abuse, poverty or hatred.
For those of us lucky enough to feel safe in our families and homes, the discovery of the world’s danger often comes from outside. I remember exactly when it happened for me. April, 1968. I remember I felt terribly alone. Uncertain. Aware that what I believed about the world had shifted in some significant way. Martin Luther King’s assassination changed forever my belief in a world of security and peace.
I was eight years old and, for the first time, knew what brokenness felt like.
If each of us were to tell our own story, I expect we would discover similar tales—moments early in our lives when we truly understood that our parents can’t always fix everything that goes wrong, that sometimes things fall apart and can’t be put back together. We realize that brokenness is always going to be around.
Some, when confronted by this challenging reality, decide not to believe it. These folks may develop a web of pretty lies in which to live. Others determine that if anything breaks, then everything does. They go around breaking things and people in their lives just to prove it to be true.
But most of us try to figure out how to live amid the brokenness.
Our world is broken—that’s absolutely true. Spend an hour reading any legitimate news source and you will learn about murder and mayhem, hatred and terror, abused children and war crimes, petty wrongdoing and just general unpleasantness on the part of too many of us. We do not live in anything approaching utopia. Rather, we live in the challenging here and now when so much is broken, so much is in pieces all around us.
As Unitarian Universalists, our first response to brokenness is often to try to fix it. We are people who believe in solutions. We think that if we work hard enough, think creatively enough, band together with enough well meaning people, we can heal this broken world. And that’s not a bad thing at all. As individuals and as congregations we offer our resources to organizations that need our money to better the world. We volunteer for worthy causes, giving of ourselves to others. And I’m often powerfully moved by the ways our people have done extraordinary things to fix that which is broken, through the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, for example, or through efforts of the Standing on the Side of Love campaign on behalf of marriage equality and just, compassionate policies toward immigrants.
Yes, I appreciate all this. But I am also keenly aware, particularly as I age, that not all broken things can be fixed. That much of the good we do can be swept away by one inept leader, by one bad decision on the part of voters, even by quirks of nature—hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes or floods. I know from hard personal experience that humans are fragile, love doesn’t always triumph, and life is hard.
Of course the world—at least one filled with people—has probably always been broken. And we humans, it seems, have always sought ways to fix that brokenness. One response is to tell stories of original, perfect, mythical worlds where all is good and pure and hopeful. One of the great myths is that of Adam and Eve in Paradise. Here is this beautiful couple, naked and carefree—happy and safe and whole—until the snake arrives. Native American creation stories often portray a perfect world before some animal trickster such as coyote or raven comes along to complicate things.
Because, of course, that’s what always happens. Paradise is never reality. It is something to imagine, aspire to, and dream about. We long for “somewhere over the rainbow,” but there is no Land of Oz that doesn’t include the challenging reality that all people, without exception, are broken, one way or another. Chipped and frayed, seams ripped apart and re-sewn, torn and battered by life. That is part of the human condition. We are horribly imperfect. We have sharp edges brought on by the many ways life has caused us to crack. You may not see them at first, but get up close and the brokenness becomes clear. Sometimes, it shines with a brilliance that is blinding.
I once took part in a mask-making workshop. Prior to the creation of the mask, we were led in a guided meditation. As in so many of such creative inner journeys, the gentle voice of our leader asked us to walk a path, see what we might see, then ultimately find our mask and discover what it had to say to us. I was reluctant to go on such a journey. I was distracted and keenly aware of my physical pain and my inner judgment (companions on almost every journey I take).
When I found my mask and invited it to speak, I expected nothing. Instead, I heard these words. What’s broken is brilliant. Huh? What’s broken is brilliant. How can what is broken in me be brilliant? What’s broken feels shameful, painful. It is not pretty or nice. It is edgy, cracked; it rubs me and everyone else the wrong way—doesn’t it?
What’s broken is brilliant. And what’s broken is not necessarily what people dislike or disdain in me or in any of us. What’s broken is often where people find connection.
Recently I read a worthy book called Broken for You, by Seattle author Stephanie Kallos. It tells the story of a group of broken people who, in the course of living their difficult lives, find powerful connection and, yes, even love. Kallos uses the metaphor of the mosaic to help readers discern the process of making something beautiful from what is broken.
Most of us know what a mosaic is—small broken pieces of stone, pottery or glass, placed in a pattern, attached together with a kind of grout. There are ancient mosaics. Perhaps you’ve seen pictures of some of the gorgeous ones in Italy and Turkey, created hundreds of years ago. But there are plenty of modern mosaics, too. Look closely at a mosaic and it feels disjointed, the pieces small and sometimes ugly, the grout discolored and cracked. But back away some distance and beauty emerges. All the broken pieces, when used in mosaic, reflect a much bigger picture than we can see close up.
Such mosaics remind me that broken pieces are not made whole by trying to glue the pieces back together again, aiming for a perfection we imagine our less-broken selves once displayed. Rather, when we allow our brokenness to be seen in new ways, when we accept that others are also broken, and love them anyway, and when we cease to view brokenness as ugly and unacceptable, healing becomes possible.
In Broken for You, the main character is badly hurt in a car accident. As she heals, she discovers her gift as an artist, for she, with the help of an ever-increasing community of oddballs, begins designing and building mosaics. Each work of art is created from broken shards of delicate china that had been stolen from Jews killed in the Holocaust and intentionally smashed to pieces by the daughter of the thief. If all of this sounds complicated, it is. In the book, as in life, beauty can, and often does, emerge not from perfection, but rather from complicated brokenness. What is broken can be brilliant.
And in the metaphor of the mosaic, I began to see how. Rather than aiming for paradise somewhere over the rainbow, a path we idealists often follow, we are challenged instead to create something with the brokenness, not in spite of it. We are called to use our own broken places—our tragic losses, our shameful truths, our unhealed wounds—to create beauty where we can. But how do we do this?
When I was in seminary I remember being taught about Henri Nouwen’s concept of the “wounded healer.” I never understood quite what this was until I shared my wounds with another in pain and we both began to heal. I expect you have knowledge and experience of this, too. If you were abused, perhaps there was a time when you overcame the shame and told the truth to another, and you both found courage. If your heart was broken, perhaps a time came when you opened it again in spite of the risk. If your life was shattered by violence, perhaps you understood for the first time why it matters to work for peace—and did so.
I cannot know what lives in the deep recesses of each of your hearts. But I do believe that the tender, broken parts in each of us are precious. Does this mean I would wish brokenness on each of us? Of course not. I don’t have to wish it. Brokenness comes with living. Nary a one of us is free from it. And yet, even the harshest tragedies, the most senseless losses, have gifts to give. In Stephanie Kallos’s words:
We speak of “senseless tragedies,” but really: Is there any other kind? Mothers and wives disappear without a trace. Children are killed. Madmen ravage the world, leaving wounds immeasurably deep, and endlessly mourned…. But we never stop looking, not even after those we love become a part of the unreachable horizon. We can never stop carrying the heavy weight of love on this pilgrimage; we can only transfigure what we carry. We can only shatter it and send it whirling into the world so that it can take shape in some new way.
We can never stop carrying the heavy weight of love on this pilgrimage; we can only transfigure what we carry. That is the task of the religious life. Not to imagine some far away paradise that only the perfect can enter, nor to give up on possibilities and sit passively in misery among the broken shards of our life. Rather we are called to transform the painful and harsh realities of our lives into as much beauty as we can. We are called to create mosaics known as community, as family, as congregations. And we are invited to bring our broken selves into relationship, and find ways to help each other heal.
As a child I learned that my parents couldn’t fix everything wrong with the world. I learned that they, and I, and everyone around me were imperfect—wounded and broken by loss, heartbreak and tragedy. But as I grew I also learned that when we broken but brilliant humans band together to create beauty and build community, powerful love breaks through. And I learned that our Unitarian Universalist faith in the unity of all life, broken though it is, and the love that blesses us, imperfect though it may be, can go a long way toward creating the world of our hopes and dreams.
Barbara has a Master of Divinity degree (granted in 1985) and a Doctor of Ministry degree (granted in 2007) from Meadville/Lombard Theological School. She is a “homebred” UU whose father was also a UU minister.
Barbara has served in leadership positions on UUA and UUMA committees and was active within both the Pacific Northwest District and the Joseph Priestly District. She has led worship services at General Assembly, was the 25 year speaker at the annual gathering of UU ministers at General Assembly in 2010 and has spoken at many large gatherings of UUs across the country. She is considered an expert in UU worship and teaches worship and preaching skills to ministers, seminarians, and lay people.
Outside of the church, Barbara has volunteered in food banks and prisons, continues to participate actively in community theatre and musical groups and reads a lot of mystery novels. She is a loving sister and aunt and has many good friends. She and husband Jaco have been married since 1990 and have just retired to Bellingham, WA where they live in the Bellingham Co-Housing Community with their cat, Sophia Lion Paws.
- The Spirit of Creativity - April 1, 2017
- Both Whole and Healing - March 1, 2014
- What’s Broken is Brilliant - March 1, 2012
